The Solution To Climate Change?

[Music] what's up guys welcome to our new series wisecrack labs i'm your host helen flourish if you're a human being on planet earth maybe you've wondered lately has it gotten a lot hotter in the past few years have there always been this many natural disasters if i reproduce are my kids gonna have to wear gas masks to soccer practice and is someone gonna do something about all of this now these are all reasonable questions it's easy to feel like things are beyond repair it's tempting to stow away on a bezos rocket and never look back but there just might be a way that science can save us and thank god because being trapped alone with bezos and william shatner sounds horrifying so today we're gonna examine one of the ways that science might save us from a rapidly warming planet direct air capture recently it seems that the apparent media blackout that's been keeping climate change out of the news for the past half century is over and the climate crisis has finally made it to network tv in full force and the recent senate cluster has largely involved fights over which climate-based policies to include in the president's infrastructure bill but we're not worried because if we trust our officials to do one thing it's to put corporate interest aside for the sake of saving society from devastating ecological collapse wouldn't it be funny if i said like that now at this point we all basically know how to stop global warming we could shift to electric vehicles utilize wind and solar power eat way less meat figure out non-chernobyl ways to use nuclear power and cut back on air travel the bummer with a lot of these is that they seem hard and in many cases imply a strong shift away from the status quo we of course want to save the planet but it's still hard to imagine a world that's not primarily run with the juice of dinosaur bones much less one where the oil companies agreed to a green new business pivot but recently a solution has emerged that seems to make it possible for us to drastically cut down the amount of co2 in the air without completely upending our current system it's called direct air capture some are super hopeful about its potential direct air capture is really more like actually hitting the brake and eventually if we do it well enough going backwards actually going back towards the climate we had before climate change became an issue while others think it sounds too good to be true i'd like to say that the technology is unproven ineffective and inefficient the basic gist if we believe the optimists is that pointing massive vacuums at the atmosphere can suck out all the bad bits leaving us with nothing but magically pure air skeptics however think it's not much better than your dad trying to save his marriage by wearing a bradley cooper mask in bed and asking your mom if she wants to make love to a star but before we decide if the science behind direct air capture can really save us we wanted to see what you think about it or no offense if you've thought about it at all i'm in downtown los angeles and today i'm going to talk to people to see what they think about climate change and air capture technology is climate change something you think about a lot yes it is not too often but i like to think more than other people it's the number one issue on my mind i have kids and it's uh it's it's the most important issue to me i try not to think about it too much because it can be like a little anxiety inducing maybe like a couple times a week maybe maybe usually every time someone leaves the water running she pisses me off awesome oh sergio how about you uh very rarely like never probably like at least once a week oh yeah definitely um i don't have a car so i take public transportation or walk everywhere so i try to keep my carbon footprint low yeah uh and yeah recycle when i can and all that other stuff that goes along with that definitely it uh it's affecting hawaii we're seeing uh some significant changes are there areas of your life where you worry about the effects of climate change in the future uh to be honest no not in my life span yeah i am yeah i mean especially living in l.a yeah there's a bunch of droughts fires which has affected a bunch of my friends and family and i have family across the united states affected by hurricanes um many natural disasters yeah i'm worried awesome yeah um sergio not so much right not so much is there anything that's like happening whether it be programs technologies anything that you see going on are there things that make you feel like maybe we're not screwed not a ton yes and no there's so much money that's being put into the stuff that we're already using like fossil fuels and stuff like that so it's just kind of like to see a big change happen anytime soon i don't see it unless the owners of those companies decide to switch all their assets in my opinion yeah i think that the city of los angeles just in itself is doing a lot of good things in terms of you know climate goals and you know we call carbon neutrality and all that net zero building so i think it's a step in the right direction you know that the ban of uh what is it a gas powered cars a couple of years from now so yeah that's all it's it's great i think no actually i have no hope whatsoever the solution to climate change requires consensus and we don't have consensus to tie our shoes it's just it's that but that's the way it is have you ever heard of either air capture or carbon capture technology no never though uh no not familiar with it you got carbon sequestration yeah capture yeah i don't know that much of it i know that there's more research going into capturing carbon in the area yeah i've heard of it but i'm not totally sure what that means never okay this is the idea that we're gonna shoot these massive vacuums basically at the air and it's gonna suck carbon out i'm just curious like how that sounds hearing about that technology sounds like a sci-fi novel yeah i think it sounds crazy and like kind of fun having giant suction fans in the air um but yeah it seems reasonable it sounds like complete nonsense i feel like that's what we have to figure out how to do we can slow down production of all these greenhouse gases but we have to take a bunch out of the atmosphere and i you know my my husband is a singer and yesterday he sang to the astronauts on the international space station it was someone's birthday and he'd asked me and i thought if we can do that and they can be chatting to one another we could definitely try to capture some carbon out of there right i mean we could do it this is a side question what song did your husband sing to the astronauts um king uh from hamilton you'll be back he it was a request for an an astronaut whose birthday was so that's amazing yeah um does he sing to you a lot he sings to me a lot yeah any other thoughts you have on climate change in general anything you think people should know things you wish people were talking about more yeah i know i think the policy overall even just as a country is going in the right direction but unfortunately wish would have done been done sooner yeah and then also we're not addressing a lot of the companies that are polluting themselves they're like you know especially in other countries yeah that no one talks about it's always like what can we do at the individual level and yeah it's uh it's helpful but it's a drop in the bucket unfortunately unless you've got your really your head stuck in the ground it's so clear so let's get it done okay so anecdotes aside what is direct air capture and how does it work well for those of you who've wondered why can't we just build a giant vacuum and suck all the carbon dioxide out of the sky you nailed it sort of in general direct air capture is a way to remove carbon dioxide from the air it does this by sucking massive amounts of air through giant bands then exposing that air to chemicals or filters which cling to the co2 this air is released back into the wild while the molecules clinging to co2 are funneled into another system where they're exposed to more chemicals or heat or electricity this causes them to let go of the co2 so you're left with a hot pure stream of carbon dioxide it basically works like a big artificial tree if trees could be super powered by giant fans the technology behind direct air capture isn't totally new we've been using some form of direct air capture systems to remove co2 from air since at least the 1950s but for the most part all of that was for use in industrial processes the difference between what we've done in the past and what we're attempting to do today with direct air capture is scale for example the climax plant that recently launched in iceland is the largest facility of its kind it filters out about 4 000 tons of co2 each year about the annual amount emitted by 800 or so cars so if we want to make a real dent in our co2 problem it seems that direct air capture even if scaled can't possibly be a silver bullet this is something that even the companies working on these technologies readily admit despite these limitations though the technology itself sounds promising on paper the us government agrees this summer the department of energy said it plans to give out 24 million dollars to 15 different universities and private companies for research and development on direct air capture projects on top of that carbon capture technologies account for about eight billion dollars of president biden's trillion dollar infrastructure plan that includes 100 million dollars earmarked for direct air capture projects specifically but a lot of scientists and environmental activists are seriously skeptical about investing money and resources into direct air capture technologies to understand why i sat down with dr mark jacobson professor of civil and environmental engineering at stanford university he was also climate advisor to former presidential candidate and aviary enthusiast bernie sanders dr jacobson's work focuses on better understanding global warming and air pollution and figuring out large-scale clean solutions to these problems he's also very outspoken in his critiques of air capture technology as a viable solution for climate change as i mentioned the most common use of co2 now is because you don't make any money putting it under the ground you make money selling it to an oil company to extract more oil i started by asking him what he sees as the potential solutions to the problem of carbon emissions and air pollution the solutions that i eventually evaluated about 12 years ago compared all the energy proposed solutions including carbon capture including nuclear power including bioenergy but what is the best solutions are those that don't require combustion that are based on renewable energy sources wind solar geothermal even hydroelectric tidal wave power storage and including battery storage other types of electricity storage heat storage cold storage an electric electric appliances heat pumps for heating air and water electric vehicles some hydrogen fuel cell vehicles for long distance heavy transport like long distance ships and planes but not technologies that allow pollution to persist and not technologies that continue pollution he also noted the importance of thinking about where this carbon goes after it's captured as i mentioned the most common use of co2 now is because you don't make any money putting it under the ground you make money selling it to an oil company to extract more oil and that's what's being done with most carbon capture today is we're just enhancing oil recovery and there 40 of the co2 just goes back to the air right away and there's actually no proof that any of it's actually captured because the rest of it's supposed to go in the oil field but you know they're drilling oil there's no proof it doesn't leak as well so it's a it's a huge social cost loss social cost is energy cost plus health cost plus climate costs it's like a factor of 10 higher costs in terms of the social cost to use money to buy carbon capture equipment or direct air capture equipment and run it and use the energy for that instead of using that money to just buy renewables to replace coal or gas and jacobson isn't shy about his skepticism towards direct air capture it's much more efficient to prevent carbon dioxide from getting in the air than it is taking it out of the you're doing the exact same thing by preventing it from getting in the air and taking it out but when you prevent it from getting in the air you're also eliminating air pollutants and you're preventing mining from occurring by you know eliminating coal and gas and oil use you're limiting pollution mining and co2 whereas when you try to take co2 out of here all you're doing is reducing co2 but you're not even reducing that much because a lot of energy is required he also discussed how direct air capture can actually help keep oil companies in business if the fossil fuel industry can say look we're capturing carbon from the air then they can that's an excuse for them not to close their coal plant because they're saying oh we're offsetting our carbon dioxide which they're not because they're not doing their accounting properly but the fact is that's what that's the goal and that's the impetus for carbon capture and direct air capture it's it's solely designed for some people to make money and to keep the fossil fuel industry in business you know you've mentioned you know where you feel like we should be focusing our resources from your perspective um in terms of the kinds of uh you know you're thinking about wind solar geothermal energy that kind of thing where do you feel like there's the most potential well ninety percent of the solution will be wind plus solar now geothermal hydro tidal wave i mean they're the combination of the two it's about or four is about eight percent 92 wind and solar and 8 all the rest even with all of his skepticism towards direct air capture he did have some hopeful thoughts on the future is there anything that can be done really at the individual level um or is this something that comes down to governments and major corporations oh um yeah individuals can do a lot communities can do a lot and policymakers at state local and national levels can do a lot yeah i'm really optimistic the reason is i mean i run the numbers so i mean we've developed plans for 145 countries in all 50 u.s states to transition to a 100 clean renewable electricity and heat for everything and after having run all these numbers we know it's possible to do everywhere and keep the grid stable and do it at low cost while creating jobs reducing health problems reducing climate problems so yeah i know it's possible not only technically but economically we have 95 percent of the technologies we need already the only ones we don't have are for like long-distance ships and flames to run on hydrogen fuel cells for battery electricity and but those are not really even technological obstacles just they haven't been commercialized so yeah i am an optimist and i've seen things going in the right right direction on average i mean there are you know i feel like it's like lightning you know you make two steps forward one step back two steps forward one step back that's kind of what's going on right now but at least it's going in the right direction and i have a feeling there are fewer people objecting to a clean renewable energy transformation so i see it as soon as we get rid of these last misperceptions about you know distractions carbon capture once we get past those hurdles then you know we will have more and more focus on what works thanks again to dr jacobson for taking the time to hang out with us so if jacobsen is right all we need to do is just quickly switch all existing energy sources to renewables and we're good to go right right well not quite first of all as dope as it would be if we could pull an all-nighter and switch over to renewable energy sources all at once that's not exactly feasible unless of course every person politician and corporation all agreed and even if it was possible we've already pumped so much co2 into the air that we either need to a remove at least some of it from the atmosphere or b continue to face catastrophic consequences of global warming and while this technology has the capacity to take co2 from the air and store it in the ground which keeps it out of our atmosphere many companies have a very different strategy as jacobson explained most captured carbon dioxide isn't stored underground it's sold so this co2 re-enters the ecosystem in one fashion or another and who's buying this stuff for the most part the oil and gas industry which uses it for what's called enhanced oil recovery that's casual oil lobbyist talk for injecting co2 into the ground so it can squeeze out every last drop of oil so the co2 in the atmosphere largely produced via fossil fuel consumption is being removed only to then be sold back to those very companies to help them produce even more oil it's the ultimate late capitalist satire george orwell couldn't have dreamt it up other familiar faces at the metaphorical carbon auction include big agriculture which uses co2 to manufacture chemicals for soil enrichment companies that make products for fire suppression and the food and beverage industry which spends more than 260 million dollars a year to make sure your lacroix pbr and mountain dew are addictingly fizzy which i mean that sounds fine so who can direct air capture count amongst its fans well pretty much the biggest polluters in the game the tech airline and fossil fuel industries companies like united and microsoft have also committed to financing direct air capture projects in order to offset their own pollution and this is where the heart of the controversy around direct air capture lies while there's no question that co2 removal is inherently a good thing when the world's biggest polluters start getting involved you gotta wonder about their intentions if we have an easy way to just suck co2 out of the air does it become a hall pass for companies to stay hooked on fossil fuels now on the one hand air capture facilities like climb works plant and iceland really do work on the other hand this plant will also take one entire year to capture three seconds worth of humanity's co2 emissions it's like using a tiny thimble to stop flooding during a hurricane and for other direct air capture startups like carbon engineering selling co2 for use in enhanced oil recovery is the only way they can afford to run their operations unless policies are enacted that incentivize carbon capture this brings us to a more fundamental and existential question can the necessary and urgent changes we need to make to save civilization from climate catastrophe ever be compatible with our current economic system or as nathaniel rich put it in the new york times the most fundamental question is whether a capitalistic society is capable of sharply reducing carbon emissions we're not so sure because the ultimate aim of the market economy is the creation of surplus wealth for the sake of money itself anything else whether it be art healthcare or saving the planet ultimately must serve that purpose this is why it makes sense that direct air capture technology would only be viable if it's able to produce a commodity that eventually leads to some type of corporate profits so to create the societal will to truly do what we need to do to stop the climate crisis society would need to be structured around values that can draw a line of demarcation between ecological sustainability and profit this would mean that the technologies we use to save the planet shouldn't be evaluated on their ability to appease shareholders but on their ability to turn back planetary devastation so while tools like direct air capture can be valuable resources in our fight against further warming the tools themselves aren't going to be enough we need the people wielding those tools to have the primary motive of saving the planet we're obviously not going to end capitalism in the eight years we have to drastically cut back emissions but we won't be able to cut back emissions if we aren't willing to at least rethink the relationship between the economy and the climate so which side of the direct air capture debate do we ultimately fall on annoyingly both scientists like jacobson are absolutely right when they point out the problems inherent with relying on this technology and the ways in which it's being used to help oil companies get away with business as usual but this technology does work and we can't completely ignore any technology that has the capability of removing carbon from the atmosphere even if it's not as efficient as we'd like it won't be enough to save us on its own but it very well might contribute to a broader project of slowing down warming and while this debate can sound a bit grim there is some genuine cause for hope as jacobson explained all the technology is already there to stop and even reverse some of the effects of climate change it's just a matter of rallying the political will to make it happen our leaders love to tell us that they believe in science and it seems like the future of humanity might just depend on the earnestness of this faith that's it for this edition of wisecrack labs let us know what you think in the comments and please like and subscribe we'll be back soon with another journey into the amazing world of scientific innovation and we hope to see you there later [Music] sergio for you what's your ideal lunch ideal lunch yeah pasta some sort of pasta amazing at least you'll be eating well no matter what happened

2021-11-16 14:37

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